Education Association: Governor is not getting the point

The state’s teachers are stepping up their protest to the governor’s refusal of federal dollars to help rescue education budget shortfalls.
South Carolina Education Association President, Sheila Gallagher says her membership is amazed that the governor is not “getting the point” what he is doing to public education,
She says that teachers have a reason to be worried.
“We have the potential of losing three thousand teachers and school employees,” says Gallagher. ” That means that classroom is now going to be a larger classroom. You’re not going to have a class of say, twenty-three. You’re going to add at least another five to the classroom. You’re not going to have the after-school program that many parents are so dependent on for the extra help that their students need. Those are the direct effects.”
The Education Association president says that the governor did not discuss paying down debt earlier in the year.
“The piece that bothers me the most,” says Gallagher, “from his little press conference the other day, he wanted to stress the point of the state debt. Yet, in his budget, the executive budget that he sent over, there is nothing in that budget that deals with the state’s debt.”
The South Carolina Education Association’s membership includes 13-thousand teachers, administrators and education professionals.